81st 24 Hours of LeMans – 2013 Race Results

This past weekend marked the 81st running of the 24 Hours of LeMans, and the 90th anniversary of the first 24 hour race at LeMans. As exciting and fantastical as the event always is, however, we should remember that part of the thrill of speed comes from its proximity to a very unforgiving edge. So, while the Audi R18 E-Tron‘s tremendous win and the Toyota hybrid‘s serious challenge to their dominance certainly deserve to be celebrated, let’s not forget that speed is an unforgiving mistress, and take a moment to talk about Aston Martin driver Allan Simonsen, who lost his life in a horrific crash early in the race.

The official statement from the race’s sanctioning body regarding Simonsen’s death is below.

The Automobile Club de l’Ouest, which organizes the 24 Hours of Le Mans, released the following statement:

The driver was immediately attended on the scene by the doctors from the Automobile Club de l’Ouest’s Medical Service.

In a serious condition, Allan Simonsen was transferred immediately to the Circuit Medical Centre where he died soon after due to his injuries.

Allan Simonsen’s family has been informed immediately by David Richards, Principal of the Aston Martin Racing team.

Allan Simonsen, an experienced driver aged 34, had taken part in seven 24 Heures du Mans.

His team mates in the No.95 car were his fellow countrymen, Christoffer Nygaard and Kristian Poulsen.

The Automobile Club de l’Ouest wishes to express its great sadness following this incident, and extends its deepest condolences to the family and those close to Allan Simonsen.

The Automobile Club de l’Ouest will make no further statement while the exact reasons for the accident are still being wholly determined.

Aston Martin, meanwhile, blacked out its website completely, except for the following statement.

Le Mans, 22 June 2013: It is with great shock and sadness that the Aston Martin Racing Team confirms that an accident occurred shortly after the start of the 24 Hours of Le Mans at around 15:09 hrs CET today (22 June) when the No 95 Vantage GTE driven by Allan Simonsen left the track at Tertre Rouge.

Tragically, and despite the best efforts of the emergency services in attendance, Allan’s injuries proved fatal.

Aston Martin Racing Managing Director, John Gaw, said: “On behalf of all of us at Aston Martin Racing, I would like to extend our deepest sympathies and condolences to the individuals, and families whose friends or loved ones were involved in today’s terrible tragedy.”

If Allan was watching from the great beyond, then, he had a hell of a view – because, by all accounts, this was a terrific race that finally saw Audi’s LeMans dominance get challenged by a hard-charging Toyota team that split the Audis and robbed them of a 1-2 finish. The Toyota teams, it should be noted, made about 10% fewer stops and finished within a lap of the winning E-Tron Audi, so there’s something to look forward to next year, in addition to the electric Nissan DeltaWing and its accompanying eye-candydrivers.

I’ve included a few of my favorite photos from Crash.net’s excellent LeMans photo gallery, below, and have posted the top results at the bottom of this page. Enjoy – and, try to remember Allan and his family a bit while you’re cruising around with your family this week. Ride/drive safe, kids!

The Aston Martin was on a right-hand turn with left-rear wheel on the blue painted area, and right-rear wheel on the pavement. As the driver tried to accelerate while on the curve, the left-rear wheel slipped on the paint and the right-rear wheel continued to have traction. This forced the car to veer to the left, ultimately causing the crash.

It is driver’s error. The painted areas of the road are obviously slipperier than the pavement.

If the car had 4-wheel drive, this spin and crash would have been less likely to have occurred. But it is easy to do when one has rear wheel drive only.

Jo Borras

What is the point of anything you just wrote? Are you saying that his death is less meaningful because it was caused by “driver error”, as opposed to – say – the LeMans’ organizers negligence towards safety regs or the crash structure of the car he was driving or any other option? Seems like a dick comment, is my point.

SRSwain

I did not detect any judgment on the driver in the first comment, merely an observation of cause-and-effect. Of course his death was meaningful. He was a young man, 34 years old, with a fine career and a family. Maybe you overreacted, sir.

Jo Borras

I did detect it. That was my $0.02 on the matter: the whys and hows are irrelevant. Driver error or not.

SRSwain

And since it was your article you felt it necessary to respond in the way you did? Was Mr. Simonsen a personal friend of yours? You seem just a tad chuff about the subject.

jameskatt

His death isn’t any less meaningful, no matter the cause. It obviously is devastating to his family and friends and fans.

But desire for meaningfulness of death is celebration of it. There is no meaning to his death other than loss.

So why desire meaningfulness for his death?

Celebrate his life and love of racing instead.

Desiring meaningfulness in death denigrates the over 50,000 people killed each year in the U.S. in auto accidents, 20,000 murdered each year in the U.S., and over 20,000 who die by suicide each year in the U.S.

sup sup dey

Drivers make errors all the time, especially in racing. That’s not the issue. The problem is track safety. This track is obviously dangerous. The car should be thoroughly looked at as well. But generally, the track barriers should have no problems absorbing crashes like this.

jameskatt

The track could have been made safer, I agree. The use of paint which has more traction on the shoulders would have helped as would better safety barriers.

Dogger

Something to look forward to next year is Porsche returning to the LMP1 class. Nissan and whatever they end up bringing is merely a novelty compared to Porsche. I guess since you have only been involved with motorsports since ’97 it may have been before your time when Porsche was dominant in prototype sports car racing…

Iron

Obviously you don’t know Nissan. You’ll eat your words.

sup sup dey

No driver should die in a race. The organizers should have used better crash barriers to minimize the chance of tragedies like these from occurring. RIP

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